[TheClimate.Vote] April 20, 2018 - Daily Global Warming News Digest
Richard Pauli
richard at theclimate.vote
Fri Apr 20 09:58:40 EDT 2018
/April 20, 2018/
[Living on Earth - about those lawsuits]
*Making Big Oil Companies Pay for Climate Disruption (Audio)
<https://www.loe.org/shows/segments.html?programID=18-P13-00015&segmentID=1>*
CURWOOD: From PRI, and the Jennifer and Ted Stanley Studios at the
University of Massachusetts, Boston, this is Living on Earth. I'm Steve
Curwood. Major fights over the fallout of climate change are heating up
in state and federal courts in California. The odds are long, but a win
by the municipalities could prove historic. San Francisco, Oakland,
Santa Cruz, and other towns and some counties have filed several actions
against Chevron, Shell, Exxon Mobil and other fossil fuel companies,
claiming the use of their products raises sea level.
The plaintiffs want these companies to pay for some of the
infrastructure that is needed to protect against floods. Exxon Mobil and
some other defendants allegedly knew for decades about the damaging
impacts of carbon fuel on climate stability.
stream
<http://loe.org/audio/stream.m3u?file=/content/2018-04-13/loe_180413_web_a1.mp3>/download
<https://www.loe.org/content/2018-04-13/loe_180413_web_a1.mp3> this
segment as an MP3 file
https://www.loe.org/shows/segments.html?programID=18-P13-00015&segmentID=1
[Wunderground]
*Why Is Oklahoma Burning?
<https://www.wunderground.com/cat6/why-oklahoma-burning>*
Bob Henson
Oklahoma's third megafire in three years-the Rhea Fire, which has
torched some 242,000 acres in less than a week-may grow even worse on
Tuesday, as horrific fire weather conditions sweep in from New Mexico
and west Texas. Relative humidity may drop as low as 3% in northwest OK,
with temperatures expected to be well above 90F and winds predicted to
gust above 40 mph.
The NOAA/NWS Storm Prediction Center has placed a huge swath of New
Mexico, Colorado, Kansas, Texas, and Oklahoma under an "extremely
critical" fire weather threat for Tuesday. It's the most dire rating of
fire threat used by SPC, and the second extremely-critical day in the
past week, following Friday, April 13. "Given dry fuels and ongoing
drought, the stage will be set for fast-moving fires exhibiting extreme
behavior," warned SPC in the outlook issued at 1 am CDT Tuesday.
- -- - -
Weather, climate, vegetation: How they're conspiring to bring megafires
to Oklahoma...
- - - - - -
The office began using the RFTI in its fire weather graphics in 2016.
Last Friday, April 13, was the first time that forecast conditions
reached the "historically critical" category (essentially a subset of
the "extremely critical" designation by SPC). It showed up again in the
forecast for Tuesday, April 17, .. see graphic
<https://s.w-x.co/wu/fire-wx-outlook-OUN-4.17.18-725px.jpg>
https://s.w-x.co/wu/fire-wx-outlook-OUN-4.17.18-725px.jpg
- - - - -
Alternating wet and dry periods leading to a profusion of fire-prone
vegetation....
Likewise, the summers of 2016 and 2017 were on the moist side, said
McManus. "We also had a pretty severe ice storm during January 2017 that
left lots of big fuels on the ground waiting for that spark," McManus
said. Later that year came the the state's second-wettest August on
record. "August would normally be a time we'd get rid of some growth in
our typical summer burn season," said McManus.
The landscape of the Southern High Plains has been extraordinarily dry
over the last six months. The western third of Oklahoma has seen little
more than 2" since October-only about 20% of average-and most of the
Texas and Oklahoma Panhandles have received much less than 1", making it
the driest six months on record in some locations. Any moistening of the
landscape has been all too brief, which has left the landscape highly
vulnerable to a spell of fire-friendly weather.
- - - - -
A growing complication for fire risk across the Southern Plains is the
expansion of eastern redcedar. These small, tough evergreen trees,
native to nearly all of Oklahoma, are the nation's most widespread
tree-sized juniper. Prior to European settlement, fires set by lightning
or by Native Americans kept eastern cedar limited to small canyons or
outcrops where the fires burned less intensely...
- - - -
A fascinating pair of studies recently published in Earth Interactions
(see Part 1
<https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/EI-D-17-0011.1> and Part
II <https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/EI-D-17-0012.1>)
discusses the eastward progression of the arid-to-humid boundary across
the Southern Plains-historically associated with longitude 100W, or the
100th meridian-as a result of climate change. This gradual shift may
become an increasingly important factor in the fire-and-climate mix in
and near Oklahoma as the century unfolds. Columbia University
<http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2018/04/11/the-100th-meridian-where-the-great-plains-used-to-begin-now-moving-east/>
and weather.com have more on these studies....
https://www.wunderground.com/cat6/why-oklahoma-burning
- - - - - - -
[follow the fire]
*Rhea Fire Information - InciWeb the Incident Information System
<https://inciweb.nwcg.gov/incident/5746/>*
- Use the map or search bar to locate wildland fire and other natural
resource incidents. Click a marker on the map and use the "Go to
Incident" button for detailed information. From the incident page you
can access announcements, closures, news, maps, and photographs from the
menu below the map (on ...
------------------------------------------------------------------------
https://inciweb.nwcg.gov/incident/5746/
---
[Bookmark this site]
*InciWeb - Incident Information System <https://inciweb.nwcg.gov/>*
About
InciWeb is an interagency all-risk incident information management
system. The system was developed with two primary missions:
Provide the public a single source of incident related information
Provide a standardized reporting tool for the Public Affairs community
A number of supporting systems automate the delivery of incident
information to remote sources. This ensures that the information
regarding active incidents is consistent, and the delivery is timely.
https://inciweb.nwcg.gov/
- - - - - -
[space tech video]
*Time-lapse of Colorado fires detected by satellite
<http://wildfiretoday.com/2018/04/18/time-lapse-of-colorado-fires-detected-by-satellite/>*
video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpPmnweVkrs
This is a time-lapse of wildfires in southeast Colorado detected by the
fire temperature sensor on the GOES 16 satellite between 1700 UTC April
17 and 0400 UTC April 18. The fire near the arrow is the 117 Fire
between Colorado Springs and Pueblo. At the lower right a fire can be
seen burning from Colorado into Stanton and Morton counties in Kansas.
Several other fires can also be seen. The fires were pushed by very
strong winds that stirred up clouds of dust.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpPmnweVkrs
[Well, duh...]
*Glacier loss is accelerating because of global warming
<https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2018/apr/18/glacier-loss-is-accelerating-because-of-global-warming>*
The Guardian John Abraham
As climate scientists predicted, glaciers are vanishing due to rapidly
warming temperatures.
With global warming, we can make predictions
<https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2015/jul/31/climate-models-are-even-more-accurate-than-you-thought>
and then take measurements to test those predictions. One prediction (a
pretty obvious one) is that a warmer world will have less snow and ice.
In particular, areas that have year-round ice and snow will start to melt.
Alpine glaciers are large bodies of ice that can be formed high in
mountains, typically in bowls called cirques. The ice slowly flows
downwards, pulled by gravity, and is renewed in their upper regions. A
sort of balance can occur where the loss of ice by melting or flowing at
the bottom is equal to the gain of snow and ice by precipitation.
As the Earth warms, the melt line moves upwards so that the glacier
melts faster and faster at the bottom, shortening the glacier and
reducing its mass. Ultimately, the melted water flows into streams and
rivers and ends up in the oceans, contributing to accelerating sea level
rise
<https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2018/feb/27/scientists-have-detected-an-acceleration-in-sea-level-rise>.
While glaciers are interesting from an intellectual standpoint, they are
also important to ecosystems and society. For example, the rate of
glacier melt affects downstream water levels, river flowrates, and the
water available for human use. So, it would be really important for us
to be able to predict what will happen with glaciers in the future and
plan for how water availability will change.
Of the groups that track glaciers, my favorite is the World Glacier
Monitoring Service <http://wgms.ch/latest-glacier-mass-balance-data/>,
which publishes a survey of the mass changes from selected glaciers
around the world, available here
<http://wgms.ch/latest-glacier-mass-balance-data/>...
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2018/apr/18/glacier-loss-is-accelerating-because-of-global-warming
[Really? Competition?]
*Competition between males improves resilience against climate change
<https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/04/180418092052.htm>*
Science Daily
"Our results indicate that these competitive mating systems can play an
important role in determining the response to new environments, whereas
species where there is less competition for mates are likely to be less
able to adapt to new conditions."
The authors caution that the study is only a laboratory demonstration of
the effect and more research is needed to fully understand how these
effects might operate in natural systems.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/04/180418092052.htm
[Art]
*Three to see New York 19-4
<https://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/three-to-see-new-york-19-4>*
Art Newspaper
In Times Square, Chin has made tablets and mobile phones available to
show a new augmented reality piece, Unmoored, which "floods" the famous
tourist destination so that viewers can experience a climate
change-induced world of water, part of a collaboration with Times Square
Arts...
https://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/three-to-see-new-york-19-4
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/19/AR2007041902527_pf.html>*This
Day in Climate History - April 20, 2007
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/19/AR2007041902527_pf.html>
- from D.R. Tucker*
April 20, 2007: The Washington Post reports:
"A third of Americans say global warming ranks as the world's single
largest environmental problem, double the number who gave it top
ranking last year, a nationwide poll shows.
"In the new poll, conducted jointly by The Washington Post, ABC News
and Stanford University, most of those surveyed said that climate
change is real and that they want the federal government to do more
about it. But the survey also shows there is little public agreement
about the policies the United States should adopt to address it.
"The findings come weeks after the Supreme Court ruled that the
federal government has the right to regulate carbon dioxide, the
largest contributor to human-caused warming. Congress is pressing to
enact limits on all greenhouse-gas emissions linked to climate change,
but it remains unclear how soon the House or the Senate could pass
such legislation."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/19/AR2007041902527_pf.html
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